Radix: Beyond the Void (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

3D rendered space ship? Check. 3D rendered text? Check. Yep, it's the nineties alright.

Fast-paced rockin' music for the briefing.

Hey, this is a proper briefing! They've given me a full map, pictures of the things I'm supposed to be destroying, a guide to what the powerups look like, the works. This is AWESOME.

They added blue stripes to the side of the Radix for safety reasons. Don't go out without reflectors and lights, kids.

Aaaaand, GO!

What is Radix: Beyond the Void then? It's a first person shooter, but you're in a spaceship! That means you're constantly moving forward at all times, you can't sidestep, there's no gravity and you can fly!

What's that in front of me? It's moving about and I'm pretty sure it's gonna shoot me...

Bang bang bang!

That was simple enough. I've destroyed 4 out of 37 things. A good start!

Looks like I'm going through that door then.

The door opens automatically as I approach. Sure beats rolling down my window, sticking my arm outside and pressing the doorbell.

Inside, spiky moving traps! They're no match for my keen sense of timing, my accelerate button, my afterburner button or my LAAAAASERS!

Are you supposed to fly spaceships inside like this? I'm sure this violates more than a few aerodyanmic principles. At the very least, it's a really stupid idea. There could be anything at the end of this corridor and I'd have no time to react.

"Kill enemies to continue"

The corridor has emerged into a 'room' I can't leave until I've defeated all the enemies. There's no escaping the room by flying upwards. The sky is a ceiling. Alright, proper combat tactics time!

As in all spaceship games, my tactics are dictated by my weapons. And, once again, I can only fire straight in front of me. Without any kind of lateral movement, my first instinct is to tap the fire button like mad and fly directly into the enemy. When one enemy explodes, I turn to face the next, and the next, until the room's clear. Attempting anything more stylish will result in my bouncing off all the walls like a pinball.

I'm in another cramped corridor, but this time there's something shooting red sparks at me and I can't see it! If I start firing, all I can see are my own blue sparks!

There you are, you little bastard. The dark grey robot drone was hiding in the dark grey shadows of the dark grey corridor. Sneaky deaky.

I shot a fan texture along the way and I've completed the secondary objective. By this point I've totally forgotten what the objectives were. If only there was a way to check. Shoulda paid more attention.

Whaddya know, I can check! There's even pictures! And the objectives show up on the automap! And there's an automap! Excellent!

You still have to find the places first. Maximum speed!

This corridor is getting narrower and narrower and it doesn't look like it's ending any time soon. Good job my shields recharge and collisions hardly do any damage.

Wait a minute, I know this place. Let me turn off the HUD and swing this thing around.

It's that room from Doom! (External link)

The corridors have opened up into another open area again. Kaboom! Only another seventeen enemies to go.

This is a lot easier now that I've realised that there's autofire on all the weapons. I'm fairly sure that those blue striped columns in the distance are the primary mission objective, but I'm going to have a look around first.

Hey, whaddya know, there's a third person view!

It's not very easy to aim like this and I keep scraping the walls.

Where did the blue stripes on my wings go?

Wooaaaaaargh! The camera doesn't keep up when you use the afterburner!

I use the afterburner all the time to get through the levels, so this view's a bit useless all round really.

Aaargh! Where did I learn to fly?

Level 2! This one looks to be nearly all corridors.

It's a good idea to keep enemies at a distance so you have time to fire enough shots at them before you fly past them or crash into them. Make sure they're definitely in front of you before you fire because the moment you do so all you'll see is blue sparks everywhere. If you're lucky enough to have the minigun weapon, the bullets hit instantly and they don't fill the screen. Too bad they're finite.

This corridor is unlike the other corrdors because the ceiling is puke and the floor is poop.

I'm getting a lot of use out of my afterburners getting lost in these corridors, but the afterburners run off the same (very slowly recharging) gauge as the blue spark weapon.

I haven't refined my combat tactics ay from the last big room like this. I don't see how I can shoot one enemy while avoiding the others.

Darn it!

You can see on the automap that there's a narrow passage leading forwards from the large oval room behind me. That passage turned out to be the size of a letter box gap and my ship was instantly destroyed when I tried to force the ship into it without looking where I was going.

Full attention on the road at all times. Never trust your GPS.

Well that sucks. I've restarted the level but all my weapons are gone. There were tons of upgrades for the recharging starting blue spark weapon on the first level, and I've lost them all now.

I could load my level start save but I'm sure I'll find more weapons.

With the interface disabled, Radix is completely indistinguishable from a first person shooter. Look, there's grey things in this room! And there's some enemies that you can barely see!

Christ, I'm bored.

Level three! I'm really starting to question the decision to send a spaceship into narrow corridors. Some kind of Body Harvest Alpha 1-esque hovercraft would have made a better choice. There's ninety degree turns in some of these corridors!

I can't really be bothered to play any more. The game hasn't done anything wrong but I just don't want to see it any more. Maybe it's because it's really, really grey. Or maybe it's because I'm sick of those corridors. Or maybe it's because the music is too loud or not loud enough. Or maybe I have no idea why I'm doing any of this.

The closest games I've played to Radix are Starwing and Starfighter 3000. Starfighter 3000 gets a pass because you're freely flying around on the surface of pretty green planets and there's loads of odd weapons and secrets to find. You've got a great big colourful map with big arrows telling you where to go. In Starwing, you're always heading towards something interesting, there's ace music and sound effects blasting in your ears and you play as a cool guy and his cool pals.

In Radix I spent half of every level trying to get my bearings and the other half of the level afterburning idly trying to find the one corridor fork I hadn't yet tried.

I'm just plain not interested.